Backlit keyboards have become increasingly common, enabling users to more easily view the keyboards in low-light settings. Backlit keyboards may be lit with a thin light guide panel placed beneath a base feature plate that supports the keys. The feature plate may be metal with multiple holes to allow light to pass through. Such light guide panels may include a thin optically transmissive sheet allowing light to pass from multiple light emitting diodes (“LEDs”).
Placement of light-guide panels beneath the feature plate may result in loss of light due to the feature plate. Locating a light guide panel above the feature plate, allowing light to originate closer to the keys, may be problematic because such placement of a light guide panel must permit structure to anchor the keys to the feature plate and allow the key to interact with the feature plate to pass through the light guide panel. In some instances, each key would require between one and six holes in such a light guide panel that allow the anchoring structure to pass through the light guide panel, totaling several hundred holes over an entire standard keyboard.